This invention relates to an automatic accompaniment device for automatically producing accompaniment tones such as chord constituting tones, bass tones and percussion instrument tones.
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. Sho-63-1598 and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. Hei-2-178697, prior art automatic accompaniment devices have an accompaniment pattern memory which stores accompaniment pattern data including normal pattern data, introduction pattern data and fill-in pattern data for each of accompaniment styles such as march, walz and rock to impart an automatic accompaniment by introduction pattern data before starting of automatic accompaniment by normal pattern data and also insert automatic accompaniment by fill-in pattern data during automatic accompaniment by normal pattern data and thereby to eliminate monotonousness in the automatic accompaniment.
In the prior art automatic accompaniment devices, however, only one pattern data for respective types of data, i.e., normal, introduction and fill-in pattern data, is prepared for each accompaniment style and, therefore, an automatic accompaniment tone which is most suited to the spirit or mood of music piece performed can not necessarily be produced.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,183 discloses an automatic accompaniment system in which two different break patterns can be selectively filled in. When a first break pattern selection switch has been depressed, an accompaniment performance according to a predetermined first break pattern is filled in and thereafter the performance is changed to a predetermined first normal accompaniment pattern (chorus pattern). When a second break pattern selection switch has been depressed, an accompaniment performance according to a predetermined second break pattern is filled in and thereafter the performance is changed to a predetermined second normal accompaniment pattern (verse pattern). In this case, there are provided two types of break patterns and normal patterns for one accompaniment style. Since, however, the break pattern and the following normal pattern are determined without any variation by operation of the break pattern switch, there arises the inconvenience that an accompaniment performance which does not match progress of the music before filling in of the break pattern may be brought about.